Cleveland schools' attendance data flagged by state auditor

The state auditor is looking into whether some school districts may have manipulated attendance data to improve their performance on state report cards.Plain Dealer file

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Auditor Dave Yost has pointed to the Cleveland school district as one of five in the state that improperly withdrew students from enrollment, raising the possibility that data was manipulated to improve state report card results.

Cleveland was criticized – along with the Columbus, Toledo, Marion and Campbell districts – in an interim report released by Yost on Thursday.

(Read the full report in the document reader below.)

Yost's auditors looked into 15 Cleveland schools in the first phase of a statewide investigation that was spurred by revelations in the Columbus, Toledo and Lockland districts. Lockland's report card ratingwas downgraded over the summerby the Ohio Department of Education after a year-long investigation.

As part of the statewide probe,Yost's office initially ran data to find the 100 schools with the highest number of students excluded from state report card calculations because they weren't continuously enrolled during the school year. Cleveland accounted for 49 of the top 100 schools, but Yost limited the inquiry to 15 schools for a broader sample.

The state of records – or lack of records – at those schools caused Yost to say: "Cleveland seems to be in a class in itself."

After visiting a couple of the schools, auditors determined they couldn't find enough supporting documentation, such as transfer forms signed by parents, to track whether withdrawals were legitimate. Schools are required by state law to keep such records, Yost said.

Ken Marshall, The Plain Dealer

District officials told the auditors "that they don't have any policies to maintain any of those things and we would find precisely the same lack of documentation in every other instance," he said. "That means there is no audit trail for us to follow, so we have to report that Cleveland is unauditable."

Another major problem: Clevelandstudents missing school without an excuse for five consecutive days have been coded in the data system as truants and removed from the rolls. But for years, they have not been referred to Juvenile Court for an official truancy determination, as state law requires.

Their withdrawals, even if temporary, are a break in enrollment, meaning their state test scores and attendance rates don't count for Cleveland's report card.

The Plain Dealer raised questions in 2008 about a high percentage of Cleveland test scores being "scrubbed" away at the same time that the district managed to improve its state rating to the equivalent of a C grade. In many cases, the passage rates on state tests were significantly higher after the scrubbing.

Cleveland schools CEO Eric Gordon acknowledged that the district needs to improve its attendance and record-keeping policies and its enrollment and withdrawal procedures. When the district moved to electronic record-keeping more than a decade ago, it stopped keeping the paper records related to withdrawals, he said.

"We can fix that and we will," he said.

But Gordon said it's a leap to suggest that the district cheated by designing procedures that would improve the district's report card ratings. He pointed to the district's highly mobile population, with students often switching schools during the year.

And he said the low performance of the schools targeted by the auditor argues against manipulation taking place.

Even after the enrollment adjustments, nine of the 15 schools examined had the lowest rating, Academic Emergency, and three were one rung up, at Academic Watch, for the 2010-11 school year.

"It doesn't pass the sniff test to me that we would have spent the effort to gin the system just to get D's and Fs," he said.

Gordon also said the district has concentrated on working with truant students and their families rather than tossing them into the court system. A study done after the 2007 shootings at SuccessTech Academy recommended that general kind of approach, he said.

But he added, "We should have reviewed our policies and procedures at that point."

The auditor's report suggested Cleveland isn't alone in withdrawing truants without involving the court. "While most schools had written policies for truancy, these policies were incomplete, lacked clearly defined procedures for withdrawal, or contravened the due process proceedings for truant students," the report said.

Cleveland's truancy approach did not sit well with State Sen. Peggy Lehner, a Republican from Kettering, who heads the Senate Education Committee and attended Thursday's press conference.

"It's pretty clear from what we are hearing that Cleveland has not been following the law when it comes to the process that's involved in declaring a child chronically truant," she said.

"The fact that they haven't gone to court in a number of years is troubling. The fact they have not created a paper trail to indicate what they have done to follow up on these truant children is also troubling."

Yost also has problems with the district's truancy procedure.

"Good intentions and pure motives are no substitute for due process," he said, adding that Juvenile Court can assure parents are informed and involved.

"That's why the statute exists – so parents know what's going on with their children. I understand the intention and trying not to go the court route, but this was designed for the benefit of the child and that seems to be something that gets lost in this discussion."

"If you take the worst performers and exclude them from the testing universe, mathematically that has to raise the average," he said. "Whether it would be enough to change the grade on the report card is another question altogether. But just because the grade didn't change, it doesn't mean there might not be a motivation."

State auditors are still trying to dig up Cleveland attendance data by working with the Ohio Department of Education and Cleveland's internal auditor. Yost expects to have more information in his next report, which will be released Oct. 23 -- two weeks before Cleveland has a 15-mill tax on the ballot.

The auditors also will be honing recommendations for the Ohio Department of Education, whose role is being scrutinized. Thursday's report said the department relies heavily on the honor system, basically trusting districts to provide accurate data, and is handicapped by having little time to produce report cards by the start of the next school year. More independent oversight is needed, the report concluded.

"The current system relies upon local schools and school districts – but these are the very entities that are interested in the outcome of the accountability measures," it said. "That is, the local building or district has a duty to ensure complete and accurate reporting, and a self-interest in making the reported data to appear in the best possible light – a classic conflict of interest."

So far, the auditor's office has spent $284,150 and 6,930 hours on the investigation. Yost doesn't expect to have a final report done until after the first of the year.